Not horrifically strange or scary, but I was out shoveling the driveway this morning and a coyote walked down the shoveled sidewalk towards me plain as day. Our eyes met for a second and I wasn't sure whether to make a break for the garage or stand my ground. So I kept shoveling and kept an eye on Mr. Coyote. He made a right hand turn and headed off between our house and the neighbor's so all's well that ends well.

I'm just glad that the coyote didn't sneak up on me when I had my back turned. I had heard news reports that the coyotes are getting bolder (we live in the middle of suburbia) due to the rough winter, but didn't know just how bold they were getting.

You are very brave, cattlekid. I think that this is very scary, especially since the creature was hungry and looking for food.

We've had foxes and a bear in our neighborhood. Some raccoons used to hang out on our deck. [This was not appreciated by our territorial indoor cat.]

Some moron is feeding a coyote in our neighborhood. Similar to Cattlekid, the durn thing walks down the road as bold as you please. Fortunately, Baren and I have only come across him once on our walk. They looked at each other, wagged tails, then coyote went about his business. From across the street, it looks almost like an unkempt beige dog. Any closer and it would have gotten the zap cane.

Not horrifically strange or scary, but I was out shoveling the driveway this morning and a coyote walked down the shoveled sidewalk towards me plain as day. Our eyes met for a second and I wasn't sure whether to make a break for the garage or stand my ground. So I kept shoveling and kept an eye on Mr. Coyote. He made a right hand turn and headed off between our house and the neighbor's so all's well that ends well.

I'm just glad that the coyote didn't sneak up on me when I had my back turned. I had heard news reports that the coyotes are getting bolder (we live in the middle of suburbia) due to the rough winter, but didn't know just how bold they were getting.

You are very brave, cattlekid. I think that this is very scary, especially since the creature was hungry and looking for food.

We've had foxes and a bear in our neighborhood. Some raccoons used to hang out on our deck. [This was not appreciated by our territorial indoor cat.]

Some moron is feeding a coyote in our neighborhood. Similar to Cattlekid, the durn thing walks down the road as bold as you please. Fortunately, Baren and I have only come across him once on our walk. They looked at each other, wagged tails, then coyote went about his business. From across the street, it looks almost like an unkempt beige dog. Any closer and it would have gotten the zap cane.

It's common knowledge in the neighborhood. He's always seen around one particular house, and there's a big bowl of food (coyote chow?) in front. The occupant owns no animals of his/her own. Us neighbors think that whoever lives there thinks it's a stray dog, or that they're trying to tame the thing into a pet.

Animal Control has been called, but by the time they arrive, it's slunk back into the hills.

I'm just glad that the coyote didn't sneak up on me when I had my back turned. I had heard news reports that the coyotes are getting bolder (we live in the middle of suburbia) due to the rough winter, but didn't know just how bold they were getting.

Coyote attacks on humans are very, very rare. If you have cats or small dogs, however, keep them inside.

There are coyotes all over the place where I live. Here are my two favorite coyote stories.

One

My husband's and my prior residence was up in the foothills of the mountains on the far east side of town. There was a lot of space between properties there at the time, though it has unfortunately been built up since.

One evening we were visiting our landlady's elderly mother, who was in another house on the same property. The three of us were sitting in the kitchen chatting and I was facing a short hallway, at the end of which was her front screen door. The bottom two and a half feet of the door was wood and the rest was screen.

I glanced down the hallway to the door for a moment and was startled to see a coyote standing on his hind legs with his front feet at the top of the wooden part of the door, peering in like he wanted to come inside and join the conversation. It was really pretty cute.

Naturally when I alerted the others, he scampered off in a hurry and they didn't see him.

Two

Brittany, our American Foxhound, had slipped out our gate one day and was running loose. This is a Code Red Emergency, as Foxhounds don't have a homing instinct and will just keeping going and going and going. My husband and I both got in our cars and headed out to look for her.

We're in a rural area where all the roads are dirt. As I was bumping along one such road, I spotted a man on his property tending to his horses. I came to a halt and shouted through the window, "Have you seen a dog running loose?"

He looked up, paused a minute, and said, "Just that one right there" as he pointed to the other side of the road just ahead of my car. Looking that direction, I saw a large, healthy coyote sitting by the side of the road like a regular old doggie, checking both of us out. He was about four feet from my car.

It's common knowledge in the neighborhood. He's always seen around one particular house, and there's a big bowl of food (coyote chow?) in front. The occupant owns no animals of his/her own. Us neighbors think that whoever lives there thinks it's a stray dog, or that they're trying to tame the thing into a pet.

Animal Control has been called, but by the time they arrive, it's slunk back into the hills.

One think I find interesting is the difference between eastern and western coyotes. Out in the west they are much skinnier and scraggly looking. Here in the DC Metro Area, the first time I saw one, I thought it was a very well fed mutt

One think I find interesting is the difference between eastern and western coyotes. Out in the west they are much skinnier and scraggly looking. Here in the DC Metro Area, the first time I saw one, I thought it was a very well fed mutt

Maybe that's because Metro Mutt ate all the scraggly ones on both coasts.

One think I find interesting is the difference between eastern and western coyotes. Out in the west they are much skinnier and scraggly looking. Here in the DC Metro Area, the first time I saw one, I thought it was a very well fed mutt

Maybe that's because Metro Mutt ate all the scraggly ones on both coasts.

One think I find interesting is the difference between eastern and western coyotes. Out in the west they are much skinnier and scraggly looking. Here in the DC Metro Area, the first time I saw one, I thought it was a very well fed mutt

Maybe that's because Metro Mutt ate all the scraggly ones on both coasts.

One think I find interesting is the difference between eastern and western coyotes. Out in the west they are much skinnier and scraggly looking. Here in the DC Metro Area, the first time I saw one, I thought it was a very well fed mutt

People have done a good deal of comparison between the eastern and western coyotes and the popular theory at the moment is that the eastern ones have a good deal of wolf ancestry. I don't know whether anyone has done DNA testing to confirm this, though.

The other week, I was in the backyard putting out food for my stray cats. The sky was very cloudy & it was about to rain. All of a sudden I heard the tornado siren go off (definitely not a fire truck siren or a car horn). In all the years I've lived here, the town's tornado siren has never been used, not even when actual tornados hit. So I freaked out, ran into the house & madly flipped through the local news channels, just to make double sure what was going on. Not one mention on any channel. And no tornado came through. Made me a nervous wreck the rest of the day, though

There have been several attacks on homeless men over the last couple months here in Honolulu. Tuesday afternoon I let Honey Girl play in the open field between the golf course and the library for the blind. Wednesday morning news reported on two homeless men who were stabbed right next to the library. One was barely scratched, but the other was taken to the hospital in serious condition. The guy who wasn't hurt badly spoke with the news reporters, although his face was blurred and his voice distorted. He saw the assault and tried to break it up, which resulted in him getting cut.

Some of the assaults were homeless on homeless, but others appear to be gangs of young men looking for trouble.

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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

The other week, I was in the backyard putting out food for my stray cats. The sky was very cloudy & it was about to rain. All of a sudden I heard the tornado siren go off (definitely not a fire truck siren or a car horn). In all the years I've lived here, the town's tornado siren has never been used, not even when actual tornados hit. So I freaked out, ran into the house & madly flipped through the local news channels, just to make double sure what was going on. Not one mention on any channel. And no tornado came through. Made me a nervous wreck the rest of the day, though

I'm reading this really fascinating book, called "The Unthinkable: Who survives when disaster strikes--and why." It talks about how when a really bad earthquake struck the coast of Chile, Hawaii had an earthquake-detection system that actually worked, and sirens went off, giving people 10 hours of warning to prepare for a tsunami. The bad part? They'd neglected to, you know, tell the citizens what the sirens were for. People had no idea what the sirens meant or what they were supposed to do, so they didn't react.

I remember being pretty freaked out the first time, in our last station, I heard the tornado sirens go off and an announcement on the loudspeaker that I couldn't understand. Turns out that the military base that we lived on the edge of does a tornado drill every month. I couldn't hear the loudspeaker because, living off base, we were just a little too far. So I guess if it ever went off for real, the first thing I would be looking at was the time to see if it was noon on the first Monday of the month.

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